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Comment QC (Score 3, Insightful) 28

A company finds that the product they are developing does not meet their quality requirements and does not launch it. I don't see why an apology is necessary. Nobody is paying for Siri AI stuff.

What they should be apologizing for, and fixing, is why Siri doesn't work as well as it did two iOS revisions ago. I mainly use it to control music playback while driving, and it has problems finding podcasts, bands, albums, songs - just about everything. It all worked perfectly a year ago.

Comment Hypocrisy (again) (Score 5, Insightful) 132

When it's wearing its YouTube hat, Google says

"fair use is not for us to decide, it's for courts to decide"

so they always side with those who claim copyright infringement in any uploaded content. As a result, videos and even entire channels get unfairly removed.

However, when Google is wearing its AI hat *it* claims that is is exempted from copyright because of "fair use" -- *without* waiting for the courts to decide.

Come on Google... you can't have it both ways -- either you need the court's consent for "fair use" or you don't. Which is it?

Comment Re:Starting with their ads (Score 1) 200

Not just trashy but scammy!

I've been reporting YT ads for their "scams and deceptive practices" and all I get is... nothing.

Even on X @teamyoutube simply says "Thanks for bringing this to our attention — we'll pass this along & handle all the next steps from here" yet, weeks later, the same scam ads continue to run.

Nothing buys immunity from the TOS more than an advertiser's wallet.

Comment Generalizations (Score 1) 59

If you cover about 10% of the roofs of an average city, Solar can generate enough electricity on average to cover the energy needs of that city.

It depends very much on where that city is. Where I live, which has cloud cover for about 50% of the year, and snow cover for another 25%, it absolutely would not cover our energy needs, especially when heat is needed in the winter.

Comment Re:Not At All (Score 5, Interesting) 189

While I agree that touch-typing isn't the primary skill of a competent, fast programmer -- it is still an amazing skill to have.

Although I've been touch-typing for almost half a century, it still fascinates me that the words appear on my screen simply as I think them. I don't even have to speak those thoughts -- my fingers automatically race around the keys and the words appear. It's almost like a direct interface between my mind and the computer.

Yes, I'm pretty fast -- about 140wpm which makes the whole experience even more fascinating since the words appear almost as fast as I think them.

Would I recommend that people learn touch-typing. Hell yes... I think people should learn *everything* they can, while they can. When you're young it's so much easier to learn than when you get old (like me). There are so many things I wish I'd learned when it would have been easier to do so -- foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, etc,etc.

However, here I am, a relic of the past. I can program in assembler for lots of 8-bit micros from the Signetics 2650 through the 8080, Z80, 6502, 6800 etc; BASIC, Pascal, C, Modula2, Java but now I'm faced with learning the intricacies of Python, Kotlin, Rust and crafting AI queries. It's getting harder every day because my brain seems to have simultaneously run out of RAM, CPU cycles and backup storage all at the same time :-)

Comment Re:Not At All (Score 2) 189

The work of the programmer/engineer is what, 95% mental work, 5% typing? (to be generous to the latter)

Only if you do zero commenting or documentation. I'd estimate 30% of my typing is code, the rest is documentation, comments, updating tickets, etc...

I learned to touch type in a writing and composition class in high school where we had to write something every day. Not anything major, but a story or report or poem. About halfway through the year I was touch typing.

Comment Re:Show It! (Score 1) 77

I considered uploading to X but discovered that unless you pay them a monthly stipend, you can only upload very short vids (90 seconds I think).

So, if you do start paying them and upload longer vids, what happens if you stop your payment either voluntarily or perhaps because you die? Will your longer vids suddenly disappear?

None of the alternative platforms offer any kind of guarantee of continued service... hence people are far better off to self-host and federate if they are in a position to do so.

Comment Re:telecom (Score 4, Interesting) 77

The hypocrisy that is YouTube just gets worse by the day.

People like Jeff have perfectly good, harmless content flagged and removed for specious reasons while the company continues to profit from scammy ads that promote fake "health hacks", counterfeit electronics goods such as the fake "Sandisk" SSDs being pitched right now, "laser welders" that turn out to be just soldering irons, water-blasters that are nothing of the sort, etc, etc.

I (and thousands of others) have been reporting these ads using the mechanisms built into YouTube and also through @teamyoutube on X but the ads continue to run until the advertiser's spend is exhausted.

Surely, after a while someone must wake up to the fact that if YouTube/Google isn't going to act when these scam ads are reported and simply continues to profit from them then they become an accomplice to fraud and should he charged as such.

I've heard from hundreds of people who've lost money after being duped by these fraudulent ads and even when THEY complain to YouTube with their proof, the ads keep running.

Now there seems to be a lot of bonafide channels being deleted for "scams and misleading practices" without warning. Perhaps YouTube doesn't like the competition whenit comes to scamming -- it wants to retain its crown as "best scammer"?

It's a shame Jeffs video was pulled because I'm encouraging people to set up their own VOD servers and federate into a global network coordinated by independent search engines. This is the only way to dethrone YouTube now that it's clearly become an evil entity.

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